When I was evaluating this excavator, I did not find a lot of owner or operator accounts on the internet. So I am adding mine to help anyone else out who decides to go this route. I've had it for 3 weeks now, and have put about 15-20 hours on it. I have used it to push down some smaller trees and stack them up to give me an area to keep it parked temporarily. In doing this, I discovered an old garbage pit. It looks like people dumped their household trash...bags of beer cans and wine bottles, etc. We dug that up and took it away. I started off being as slow and methodical as possible. Trying to learn how to control it. I have a 36 inch bucket on the machine and it handles that quite well, digging up buckets full of red clay and roots.. I may spring for an 18 inch bucket because that will allow me to power thru roots a little easier, and I can also use it for some other projects. I thought about a frost pick as some have recommended but think am going to hold off on that for now. one of the things I learned is "don't be afraid to dig a hole". Some the trees grow their roots deeper than others, and you have to get in there to loosen them up. busting up roots, leaves a lot of root material...it takes a bit more time to jump down off the excavator and pull that stuff out of the hole too, but I think it's worth the time, for what I want to do.
Dropping a rot ball on another stump is a great way to bust a lot of the dirt off of it.
Filling in the holes as you go is a must, especially if you have more stumps nearby to contend with.....Some models of excavator have a small blade on the front to push dirt around..mine doesn't. It would be convenient but I would still be going back over all of the area with the scarifiers and box blade to even out the soil before planting.
Making sure your windshield wiper blade is in serviceable condition before you need it, is a good idea.
Grease, Grease, Grease. greasing the zerks is an almost daily chore. There are a lot of them. you will go thru a lot of grease. But it gives you an opportunity to give the equipment a once over before you start running it for the day. I was greasing the zerk on the hydraulic thumb and discovered that the retaining pin for the rod that holds the thumb on the hydraulic cinder was missing.
I didn't have a bolt or pin that would fit, so I wasted more than an hour, driving to town on a Sunday to get one. Lesson learned....keep multiple extra bolts and pins handy.
The learning curve on using the excavator is pretty steep. Go slow, and don't get frustrated....Be gentle on the equipment..Don't beat the heck out of it. It's expensive and dangerous. I am certain I haven't come close to putting the kind of stress on the excavator that it has seen in the past, but I am trying to keep it running and not spend a fortune on repairs. It still will shudder and jump like a bucking bronco from time to time when you are trying to pull thru some roots and they give decisively.
Taking shallower bites with the bucket helps to control this .
All in all, I am very happy with my excavator. I put in 3 days of stump work this weekend, averaging about 5-6 hours a day and I have cleared about half an acre and I am getting faster as I go.
The Komatsu PC130 has a lot of power, is very easy to control and it uses less fuel than I thought it would.
